


Daybreak

by pants2match



Category: NCIS
Genre: Episode s11e13 Double Back, Episode: s08e14 A Man Walks Into A Bar..., Episode: s09e01 Nature of the Beast, Episode: s09e16 Psych Out, F/M, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pants2match/pseuds/pants2match
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’ll never be 'just' because she’ll always be Kate’s sister, because she knew him through Kate’s eyes long before he knew her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daybreak

**Author's Note:**

> For [Viktorija](audreysparker.tumblr.com).

It was easy before he realised what happened, before he realised how much Kate must have told Rachel for her to be able to shoulder past the walls Gibbs had put up between his team and the word 'mandatory'.

There was no way to be sure what she’d said to the rest of the team, but what she’d told him held so much more weight than just the words. She knew things about him, she said things only Kate would say.

There was no deathbed sentiment to pass on, there couldn’t be – she never got the chance.

Which means that Kate talked about him.

Enough so that her sister would seek him out twice, even after he was a jerk.

(It’s not something he’s really able to comprehend, being a part of someone’s life – having been a part of Kate’s. Even now, he’s been with NCIS for almost a decade, and that feeling of permanence still hasn’t set in. Maybe he’s not wired to stay still for so long.)

—

The second time they meet, he forgets her name – her last name, that is. (He’s had enough concussions to know what comes along with them, but he wasn’t expecting it, not with her.) 

His stomach had churned at the thought of calling her 'Dr. Todd'. All he knew in that moment was that she’s Kate’s sister; that Gibbs could have gotten the in-house psych, could’ve called any number of military psychs to do his evaluation, but he called her.

When he says it, he almost regrets it, but she doesn’t falter, doesn’t grimace; she handles his clumsiness with the same brand of calm her sister would have.

He fidgets, he can’t sit still and it’s awful. After the last time he met her (the first time, the time he realised exactly who she was and why she was there) he’d felt at ease in a way he hadn’t in a long, long time. But now, his words come out awkward and clunky, sit heavy on his tongue until he has to force them out.

So, he reverts to Classic DiNozzo – stupid jokes and cracks that used to earn him an elbow to the ribs, because that’s who he feels he’s supposed to be – the comic relief she’d challenged him on all those months ago. And it works, until she calls him out on it. She’s stark and practical and he has to be conscious of his words, her words, or he’ll get lost in it.

Her discomfort is evident when Gibbs returns. Tony could feel his stomach drop and his pulse pick up as he was about to speak, and maybe she could feel that, could tell he was about to admit he has no memory of the events that landed him in this damn bed.

– She’s looking out for her baby sister’s guy, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. She defends him to Gibbs. As good as tells him to stop being a bastard and let her handle this. 

It’s not until then that he stills.

She's comfortable with him, in a way he'd never have expected. Maybe it's the psychologist in her, a need to make patients post-trauma feel at ease with her, but it's still surprising; the way she sets herself beside him on his (hospital) bed, how she's able to perch herself anywhere in the room and look a part of it.

She spoke about his predilection to date (fall for, whatever) ‘damaged women’, and he's tempted to call her out on the exception. He can sense a trap, though, that either way that conversation ends with her coming out on top, so he doesn't peruse it.

(Because Kate wasn’t damaged. Not yet anyway. There’s a thought that, maybe if she hadn’t died, maybe if they had been, she would have ended up that way. He really doesn’t want to say that, especially to Rachel.)

And, God, he’s almost certain she picks up on Stratton before he does. She puts herself in a position of authority, barely lets him past her. She’s protecting him and it’s infuriating in the worst way. He’s done nothing to deserve it; she isn’t even an agent and she all but puts her body between him and and someone who wants him dead.

Afterwards, he can’t put a finger to what’s wrong with him. He feels almost uprooted, like he’s standing on unsold ground. He’s not acting like himself, feels oddly stilted and knows that McGee, Ziva and Gibbs pick up on it.

He never figures it out.

McGee does, though. Never tells Tony. Once he finds out (overhears) that Rachel was with Tony while he was in the hospital, he puts the pieces together in an instant. He’s been acting something akin to the way he had after. Trying to act in a way Kate would want him to. 

He hadn’t overcompensated in the way McGee had expected. He’d been prepared for Tony, amplified to the nth degree. What he got was Tony, after Kate had been furious with him — not the elbow-to-the-ribs pissed — the real, stinging bile hostility where she couldn’t even look at him.

—

The third time they meet, she catches him off guard. He’s not even sure it’s her when she’s in his peripheral.

He feels sick, though.

At least the last time they met they were alone (or all but). This time there's Ducky and McGee and Ziva and a slew of local LEOs surrounding them, and the greeting comes out bitter.

(Still, the name doesn’t seem to fit quite right, but it feels better than the alternatives. 'Dr. Rachel' seems too childish. 'Dr. Cranston' seems even worse, as though she’s just another psych doing mandatory evals or assisting on a case or _involved_ in a case.

She’ll never be 'just' because she’ll always be Kate’s sister, because she knew him through Kate’s eyes long before he knew her.)

It was supposed to be a joke, a throw back to the last time they met, but no — when the words meet his own ears they sound as though he resents her presence. 

He doesn’t, not at all.

(Ziva, however, sounds intentionally bitter. He thinks that feels worse. Then again, she didn’t find out she was Kate’s sister until well after the fact. She’s entitled to her irritation.)

—

The problem is, he can’t seem to be himself around her. Last time it had been intentional, a way to deflect from the real issue. Now, it’s because he can’t deal with her.

He doesn’t hate her, could never hate her. She’s an oddity in his life, someone he can’t class as ‘work’ or ‘personal’ and the only way he can think of describing her is ‘in another life’ because he’s sure, more positive than he’s been of anything for as far back as he can remember, that he would have known her if he was living Other Tony’s life.

(Other Tony was a facet in his life until Jeanne, until he had to become Another Tony, and he knew he might get lost if he were to hang onto Other Tony. Then after meeting Rachel he had struggled for weeks, months even to try and let go of Other Tony again, Other Tony who got to live a different life he can’t even be sure he’d rather have anymore, and it was hard to get a grasp on the fact that he might actually be content with being just Tony now. 

He’d gotten him out of his head and then there she is again and he’s already dealing with cracks in his psyche and he thinks if Other Tony comes to mind he might not be able to let him go, let him live his own life for a long, long time.)

He’s almost positive this is why he can’t find his footing with her anymore, that the vigour of whatever he’s feeling at any given time around her has worn down any decent footholds and he’s stuck just trying to make sure he doesn’t fall.

But the thought of not having (seeing, talking to, working alongside?) Rachel has him grinding his teeth enough to trigger a headache and make his eyes water — not tear up. Rachel is a good person, he likes her, and she likes him, seems to care about him more than she should and he knows Kate was, is, the reason for that. 

Somewhere along the way (he hopes, honestly and truly) she must have said something — maybe after everything with the y. Pestis; that she was (as he only came to believe much later on) scared by this show of mortality, that he’s not indestructible and yet would still step in front of her in the line of fire. Because he would, without a second thought.

And maybe that’s Other Tony trying to break through, to not let go of her because she’s a part of his life.

(In reality, it was after her first brush with Haswari. 

She’d left a message to Rachel that night, somewhere between tears of relief and fear, asking her to call after work tomorrow, that it’s a long story; all the while trying not to sound frantic.

– It hit her hard once she got home, once there was nothing to do but rest.

She told her about what he said, that, maybe, Stockholm Syndrome can happen just like falling in love, — what Tony knew to be falling in love — _just like that_. Rachel hadn’t said anything about that particular analogy coming from that particular man because if she knows one thing about her sister, it’s that she can be crappy with her heart; that she’ll protect it too much or too little, or not fall for the right guy hard enough when she’d hit terminal velocity with the wrong one.

What Rachel had wanted to say was glaringly obvious, she thinks maybe Kate already knew what she would say, so she’d pushed past it, didn’t come up for air when her lungs had been burning.

She called Rachel more than she had since she graduated college after that.

– If Kate hadn’t been running herself ragged worrying about Tony in the aftermath of the y. Pestis, she’s sure they would have spoken every night up until.)

—

She has something almost peculiar with Gibbs, and he’s almost glad for it, because it means she can still be a presence in his life without having to be there next to him. He knows it’s selfish, but next year, he hopes she’ll come to him, or let him come to her. He wants to be able to say the words (whatever he says, he’s not sure what will come out because there’s no doubt in his mind he’ll be waking up next to his own vomit) to someone who knows the other side of the story, someone who’s own words won’t just be platitudes.

Because every now and then it hits him like a freight train, the fact that she’s gone.

That whatever he had felt for her then, whatever he still feels for her now, is only a fraction of what he could have felt.

And that the loss doesn’t even begin to touch what it could have been.

(Because he’s in love with Ziva — not ‘was’, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able not to — and losing her almost broke him, broke him further than he ever thought was possible.)

—

Sometime mid-January Tony comes in at dawn.

He’s almost certain he’s coming down with something because when he asks Gibbs for Rachel’s number his hands are shaking and his voice trails at odd points.

“Tony, you looking for a shrink or for Kate’s sister?”

“Both?”


End file.
